Dutch psalters and service book

I have recently acquired a small stack of liturgical books from the library of a recently deceased minister in the Christian Reformed Church. These include metrical psalters from three Reformed denominations in the Netherlands and an intriguing service book showing the influence of the 20th-century Liturgical Movement.

The first book I want to highlight here is a psalter and hymnal used in the former Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (GKN), a denomination that lasted from 1892 to 2004. I have had more than one copy of this collection over the decades, one of which (with quite small print) I recently gave to a younger friend headed for seminary. This volume reflects the decisions of the General Synod of Middelburg of 1933 and contains the 1773 versification of the Psalms in use from that year until well into the late 20th century and even into the 21st in many places.

Psalms in the Dutch Bible Belt

Last month I spent a week in the Netherlands on a speaking tour related to two of my books, Political Visions and Illusions and Citizenship Without Illusions. On the last two days of my stay, one of my hosts and I twice visited the Grote Kerk in Nijkerk. Here is the story:

What is a Mannenzang? There is a Dutch tradition, apparently not more than three decades old, of mass gatherings of men in churches, and perhaps elsewhere, to sing psalms and hymns together. The sound of huge numbers of tenor and bass voices praising God in song exudes a certain power that has to be experienced first hand for a full appreciation. In the evening of saturday, 19 September, Samuel and I made our way into Nijkerk's historic Grote Kerk for a mannenzang. I would be hard pressed to estimate the number of men present, but the building was completely filled for the event. The assembled men sang six psalms according to the Genevan melodies and six hymns. These were interspersed with commentary by Dr. Paul Jan Visser. Martin Mans was at the organ, Pascal van de Velde on the trumpet, Wibrand van Norel on the timpani, and Jan Verhoef directing from the front.

I recorded two of the songs we sang together, including one that will be familiar to English-speaking Christians. Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven is one of my favourites, written by Henry Francis Lyte in 1834, with accompanying melody by Sir John Goss. The words are loosely based on Psalm 103. In Dutch this becomes Prijs, mijn ziel, de Hemelkoning, whose first stanza I recorded below:

A sister's favourite, continued

Today would have been my sister Pam's birthday. So many people reach an age she missed by just over two weeks. As it happens, her favourite psalm, Psalm 62, is the first Psalm prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer for morning prayer on the 12th day of the month. Accordingly, I prayed this psalm this morning as part of my daily prayer regimen.

 

Pam's California licence plate read: "62PSALM." In her final days she told me that, once she had ordered this plate number, she recognized that she would have to be an exceptionally courteous driver so as not to be a bad witness to those with whom she was sharing the road. And, she said, it worked!

 

I miss you, Pam!

Psalm 62: a sister's favourite

It saddens me to report that my beloved sister Pamela died in the early afternoon of tuesday, 28 July, after a two-year battle with cancer. Pam was an exceedingly kind and generous person who loved God with her whole being. She was a remarkable woman who ended her working life only recently at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Cal Tech. It would be difficult to recount in total all the good things she did for so many people, including family and friends. Our immediate family has several quilts she made for us. When the COVID pandemic started six years ago, she made masks for each of us and sent them by mail. 

Pam's favourite psalm was Psalm 62, a reference to which was in the number of her car's licence plate. Several years ago, I set this psalm to verse as part of my ongoing Niagara Psalter project and dedicated it to her.

A psalm of lament: a personal exercise

I am currently part of a small group at my church studying a book by W. David O. Taylor, Open and Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life, published by Thomas Nelson in 2020. Chapters are devoted to honesty, community, history, prayer, poetry, sadness, anger, joy, enemies, justice, death, life, nations, and creation. At the end of the chapter devoted to sadness the author has given readers the following exercise:

Write out your own psalm of lament, following the basic pattern presented in the chapter on poetry. Write your complaint to God. Write a specific petition of God. Write a resolution to trust that God will hear and heed your petition in a timely fashion, even if it is not according to your timetable (78).

I decided to take up the challenge, using the pattern he describes and the poetic scheme typical of the canonical Psalms, including Hebrew parallelism and three rhythmic stresses in each line. Naturally much of the language draws on scripture itself. This is the result:

Psalm 42: Men Sing Grand Rapids

And here is Genevan Psalm 42 from Men Sing Grand Rapids:

Psalm 116: Men Sing Grand Rapids

There is something powerful about male unison singing. Here is Genevan Psalm 116, sung by Men Sing Grand Rapids. This gathering is inspired by a similar group in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Psalms for All Seasons: a review

Last year I reviewed the 2013 hymnal, Lift Up Your Hearts, which my congregation now uses as its principal worship book. One year earlier, Faith Alive Publications, the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, and Brazos Press co-published Psalms for All Seasons: A Complete Psalter for Worship. These two volumes are evidently companion collections with some overlap of contents and even similar cover designs. I have now seen a copy of the earlier collection and will review it here.

In my previous review, I noted that the number of complete Psalms in LUYH had been diminished and that the publisher was recommending the current volume for congregations desiring a complete psalter. The arrangement of the metrical psalms in this collection is similar to that of the blue Psalter Hymnal of 1957 and the influential 1912 Psalter of the former United Presbyterian Church of North America. Each Psalm is represented by several alternate renditions among which worship leaders might choose. Each of the 150 Psalms begins with a prose version from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. This is then followed by different ways of singing it, including responsorial settings and chant. The vast majority of the selections are metrical versions, many of which will be familiar to members of the Christian Reformed Church and other churches inheriting the tradition of the 1912 Psalter. Some of these Psalms are are in other languages, including French, Dutch, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Some are accompanied by extra-biblical prayers and litanies.

Sing a New Song: the companion volume

I would love to have seen this special exhibit at the Morgan Library in New York City, but I was able to experience the next best thing in the companion volume, which my unfailingly thoughtful wife gave me for Christmas. This is an utterly beautiful book, a feast for the eyes and for the spirit. It is edited by Roger S. Wieck, with the assistance and contributions of several other people, and a foreword by Colin B. Bailey, director of the Morgan Library and Museum. Chapters are devoted to David as Psalmist, Translating the Psalms, Teaching the Psalms, Illuminating the Psalms, Performing the Psalms, and Using the Psalms.

A guitar journey through the Psalms

Christian Courier recently published my article, A guitar journey through the Psalms, recounting a project of which I have kept readers of this blog informed for the past year or so. An excerpt:

For most of 2022 and 2023 I had been unable to play guitar at all due to a painful attack of frozen shoulders following a freak illness contracted during a visit to Michigan. This condition made holding a guitar virtually impossible, and I had begun to doubt that I would ever play again.

But when the last of the symptoms disappeared at the beginning of 2024, I was delighted to recognize that I could once again painlessly hold a guitar in the proper position. However, by that time I had become quite rusty in my abilities. So I persevered and kept at it over the next months, and by November I was ready to add more performances to my channel.

Read the entire article here. 

Sing a New Song: The Psalms in Medieval Art and Life

I would love to see this exhibit at The Morgan Library & Museum: Sing a New Song: The Psalms in Medieval Art and Life. Here is a description of the exhibit:

Sing a New Song traces the impact of the Psalms on men and women in medieval Europe from the sixth to the sixteenth century. It encompasses daily practices and performance, as well as the creation of Psalters (Books of Psalms), among the most richly ornamented manuscripts ever made. Stressing the integration of the Psalms in medieval life, topics range from children saying their prayers to people preparing to die.

The Morgan Library & Museum is located in midtown Manhattan in New York City. The exhibit runs from 12 September 2025 until 4 January 2026.

Psalm Singing and the Genevan Psalter

I would love to have been present at this wonderful presentation by Prof. Karin Maag at Calvin University: Psalm Singing and the Genevan Psalter. Maag was one of my principal hosts when I lectured at Calvin on the same subject three years ago. She is author of Worshiping with the Reformers, which I reviewed last year.

The Lord's Supper: how often?

An article I wrote some 35 years ago has been translated and published in Portuguese. The title is The Lord's Supper: how often? and was originally published in Reformed Worship, 15, March 1990. The translated article can be found here: A Ceia do Senhor: Com Que Frequência?, posted at Liturgi Homo: Reflexões sobre Culto Público e Liturgia. I have long been persuaded that our churches should be celebrating the Lord's Supper at least every week. I am pleased to report that in recent years the practice is expanding in the Reformed churches. My own congregation has done so for about a year or so, and the congregation where our daughter and son-in-law worship does so as well. The congregation with which I worshipped in New York City in January also celebrates the Lord's Supper weekly. Thanks be to God!

At last: a complete Genevan Psalter playlist

The current project drew on a very few of my earlier recordings of Genevan Psalter tunes, but it began in earnest last November, when I started to record as many of these 16th-century melodies as I could master. As of today, I have now completed my guitar performances, recordings, and uploadings of all 124 tunes of the Genevan Psalter, along with a few associated tunes, which can be enjoyed in order here.

Here is Psalm 129, which I recorded this morning:

 And the last one to be added to the playlist, Psalm 132:

Listeners will perhaps not be surprised that I left the most challenging of the tunes to the end. In fact, I was far from certain that I would be able to master all of them. Some I have been able to play for years, if not decades. Others I worked up more recently, with the final tunes being performed and recorded today.

I might add that this belatedly fulfils a commitment to the Stanford Reid Trust, whose grant in 2021 was intended to allow me to add a limited number of performances of the psalm tunes to my YouTube channel—something delayed by the pandemic and illness. Instead, with permission from the Trust, I used the funds to complete my versifications of the Psalms that year, a project you can read about here.

Brian Wright's Anatomy of the Soul: Psalm 27

Our friend Brian Wright continues his musical journey through the Psalms, using the texts from the Book of Psalms for Worship set to his own music. Here is a lovely rendition of Psalm 27:

Genevan Psalm 4

In my guitar journey through the melodies of the Genevan Psalter, my latest performance is of Psalm 4. This leaves me with only 20 tunes remaining before completing this project, which began in earnest last November. Many of these last tunes I have found especially challenging, and this includes Psalm 4, which is unusually long at 10 lines and has an irregular metrical pattern of 98 99 89 89 98. Lines 3 and 6 repeat, but there are no repetitions in the other lines. These factors make it difficult to memorize. It is one of only 6 tunes in the Aeolian mode, which is equivalent to our minor scale. I played it at a fairly brisk pace, because, at such length, it tends to drag when being sung. The entire Genevan Psalter playlist can be accessed here. I will, of course, alert readers to the completion of this project when and if the time comes. Stay tuned. 

Click on this link to see the full text of this Psalm.

Calvin Seerveld (1930-2025)

Calvin Seerveld was the longtime senior member in aesthetic philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. I myself was a junior member (student) there in the late 1970s and had the privilege of sitting in one of his seminar courses. Although he was not my principal mentor, I recall his inimitable teaching style and the enthusiasm he brought to the subject matter.

As I write, I am looking at my notes from one of Seerveld's lectures from 20 September 1978. In my youthful handwriting, I quoted him: "The world is a created theatre of God," and "One finds meaning in Jesus Christ." Seerveld was above all a faithful servant of Christ and a memorable teacher.

Is the LORD God a sun and shield? A follow up

After I posted last week on a solar metaphor for God, I looked back at my own metrical versification of Psalm 84 and discovered that I too had paraphrased this text, eliminating the reference to the sun, but following through on its meaning:

Better by far one day to be
within your courts than live to see
a thousand years while elsewhere dwelling.
The threshold of your house, O Lord,
is vastly thus to be preferred
to where the wicked make their dwelling.
For God the LORD, our source of life,
will be our shield amid the strife.

I am currently exploring publication options for my English-language Genevan Psalter collection.

Is the LORD God a sun and shield? LXX: perhaps not

Not long ago I was reading a book that quoted Psalm 84:11: "For the LORD God is a sun and shield." I have observed in the past that the Greek Septuagint translation (LXX) of the Old Testament tends to avoid rock metaphors for God, substituting another word such as strength. For example, Psalm 95:1 runs as follows in the RSV: "let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation," while the New English Translation of the LXX (NETS) has it as such: "let us make a joyful noise to God our savior!" Might the LXX do something similar with a sun metaphor for God? After all, ancient peoples around the world, from Egyptians to Aztecs, worshipped the sun as a god. Might the LXX translators have exhibited a skittishness about inadvertently identifying the God who has created and redeemed us with the sun?

The church modes in Scotland and Geneva

In my previous post, I linked to a choral rendition of Psalm 43 from the Scottish Psalter, as sung to the haunting tune MARTYRS, one of only two tunes in that collection in the Dorian mode. I should immediately clarify that the edition of the Psalter to which I am referring is the 1929 edition published by the Church of Scotland. This includes tunes ranging from the 16th through the 19th centuries. The edition shown here is a split-leaf psalter, in which tunes and texts can be mixed and matched according to the preferences of ministers and congregations.